No Rest For The Weary

Well, if I've been lazy the rest of the week I sure made up for it today! We have been saying all summer that we were going to put my two younger nephews ~ ages 7 and 8 ~ and my niece ~ age 3, almost 4 ~ to work staining my ramps this summer. They seemed to have a ball when Mom put them to work painting her deck, so we figured why not have them paint my ramps for me? After all, they are all on their level so they wouldn't have to worry about climbing on anything and the stain is supposed to be washable with soap and water, so what would the harm be? My biggest worry, of course, is that I'm slightly anal and I had/have this fear, especially with the ramp in the front that we are letting a 3-y/o, a 7-y/o, and an 8-y/o go nuts with a paintbrush and a can of stain that is going to be visible from the outside of my house. I love these children dearly, but I am the kind of person who will go into a doctor's office and if I see a picture on a wall that is crooked, it will drive me insane until I straighten it out, and if I can't reach it to straighten it out, I ask someone else to do it. 


Well, Devic painted for about 5 minutes and then he decided that he was done and needed to take a long break. I don't think he ever went back to painting. Maybe he did, but I don't recall that Mom was able to talk him into it. Sophia was painting and then she had to take a break, and then she went back to painting and then she had to take a break. She was pretty much on and off all day. Mitri was being a little pain right from the beginning. He evidently had a scratch on his foot and was playing the "lame" card. He was limping really badly because of this tiny scratch and said that he couldn't work because of it . Well, his mom has a broken foot and I'm assuming that she really milks it for all it's worth at home because Devic finally told him to quit acting like his mom and start helping. I think I'm pretty close about his mom. [She's not even using crutches ~ she's using my manual wheelchair!] Well, it was about 11:55 a.m. before they even got there and Mitri asked what time it was. We told him it was almost noon. He said he was hungry. Mom told him he had just literally eaten breakfast and that we were going to work a little bit and then I'd make dinner. He and Devic both said, "At our house we eat dinner at noon". I KNOW that's not true because half of the time they're with Mom and she doesn't feed them at noon. Anyway, he finally came outside to help and he worked harder than the other two put together. 


So they painted and I chopped weeds. I swear some of those weeds were taller than the trees were! And they were so tall that they were starting to actually grow trunks instead of stems! I managed to get all of the weeds out of the rocks. My allergies are going to be thanking me tomorrow. I'll probably doing nebs half the night. But I can now see the corner of my house again!  =) Then I went over by the fence line. There were a couple of weeds over there that were so tall they were literally growing into the tree. They were growing a trunk that was so thick I couldn't pull it through the fence. It had intertwined itself into almost every single link in the fence and I had to have Jon go through to the other side of the fence and pull it through in pieces when he showed up before going to work. So I got those weeds out of there. It needs to be raked really badly 


Once that was done we fed the kids. Mom had to go for a haircut so she took the kids home when she went there. I continued to paint when she left. I was doing the outside rails. Funny, but the rails kept sloping up, but the ground didn't move. I wonder why??? ;)  So my arms were getting really sore. I ended up having to move to the bottom. Well, by the time we quit for the night, I got the bottom on the outside pretty well done. I just have the board right smack dab in the front left to do, and I was going to do that tonight but we needed to move the plant table out of the way in order to do it. Tomorrow we just need to finish the inside top rail, which I can do, and the very bottom on both the inside and out, and the floor needs to be done, but we can't do the floor until I'm not going to have to use the ramp. They could do that while I'm gone on the 7th of Sept. We'll have to see.


So now I'm sunburned, my back is killing me, my arms are achy, my shoulders hurt, my wrists and hands hurt ... and I'm ready to finish tomorrow. I have an eye appointment at 11:45 a.m. and then I'm going to finish. I think we'll be leaving the other one until next year.  =)